Hi,

I've just got hold of a B&O system, consisting of:

• Beomaster 6000 4-channel (type 2702) receiver (seems to work, except some indicator lamps)
  
• Ultrasonic remote control for the above
  
• Beogram 6000 tangential tracking turntable (seems to work fine, but unsure of cartridge condition)
  
• Beogram 3400 turntable (missing cartridge)
  
• Pair of Beovox 5700 speakers (centre domes of the bass drivers have perished, and one has disintegrated)
  
• Pair of Beovox S22 speakers
  

I'm new to the B&O world, but picked the whole lot up for a bargain price on the advice of a friend who advised me that many of the components individually would be worth more than I paid for the system as a whole.

I've managed to find some replacement bulbs, which should be arriving imminently through the post (discontinued, but there seem to be fruit machine bulbs available of the same spec).

Does anyone know where I might find replacement bass drivers, or if they are repairable? The dome at the centre of the cones seems to be rubber, which has completely perished, and one had a small tear which on testing caused it to disintegrate completely.

Also, the only source of replacement cartridges seems to be a US company called Sound Smith, and a single cartridge will cost me more than i paid for the whole of the above system! Are the cartridges 4-channel specific? And do i need to replace with such, given that they're never going to play quadraphonic records? I'll probably keep the 6000 turntable and sell the 3400, although I'm not sure how much I'll get for this minus the cartridge.

From what I've read in reviews on this site and the like, the 6000 system was the pinnacle of the B&O range in about 1977 - I was also wandering how these things fare nowadays - are they still as desirable as other models? It it worth spending the money to refurbish it all?

Sorry to ask some non-specific questions, but to be honest, any advice at all on the system, repair, maintenance, service manuals, value etc. would all be appreciated.

Thanks!

Owen

A superb looking system but not the best sounding one ever made and rather complex but having said that , I would love one! Yes the cartridges from soundsmith are expensive but they are very good. For any bits needed contact Dillen on here (thats his user name). If anyone can supply drivers, it will be him

Hi Owen

I had the same problem with my 5700's. Dillen sold me new replacement dust caps for the centre of the woofers plus the glue. Was very easy to do with the instructions he gave me! Very worth while repair as its impossible to find replacement woofers.

Ben

Interesting system! I have had this one - still have the Beomaster though the Beogram has been used in another project now. At least you don't have the matching Beocord 5000, which ranks as probably the most complex and unreliable bit! The 5700 speakers are excellent , the S22 are fine but rather small in comparison - to use the quad system properly, you should really have similar sized speakers. The 6000 system was often sold with 4 P50 speakers.

As far as worth is concerned, the best bit is the Beogram 6000. This is a lovely deck, based on the 4002 but with a built in CD4 decoder which includes a RIAA. The latter fitting means that this deck will work with the modern equipment with no extra external boxes required. The cartridge should be an MMC6000, which had a beryllium cantilever and a Pramanik stylus, which is a contact line design, based on modifying a Shibata profile. This will have worn unfortunately. I'll come back to your options here!

The Beomaster 6000 is an incredible beast - essentially two Beomaster 901s joined together with more powerful transistors and then put in a space age box. It really does look like something from Star Trek - think the original series medical beds!! The incredible thing about this is the mechanism used though. It is all done with light bulbs, motors and black tape! Completely batty! 20 years later and it would all be LEDs but clearly this was not available at the right price then. You therefore have an incredible amount of engineering packed into a small box with clutches and motors all crammed in. In addition, this is an indirectly coupled amplifier, so there are big capacitors to be fitted in as well. Faults - lots! The top should have been glass but isn't - it scratches easily. The aluminium keys have a tendency to mark and, worse, can start bending upwards. I do not know of an easy fix for this. My old dealer reminisced when I brought mine in for repair of throwing five of these into a skip as they were not economic to repair. He did repair mine (blown power transistors - another fault!) though refused to have anything to do with the Beocord 5000!

The actual electronics are not too bad as it is really two 901s as said before. The problem is access. The critical parts are cosmetic as you will find getting trim parts almost impossible. Do you have the brick remote?

The decision you have to make is how are you going to use it. If you plan to use it as designed, as a quad system, you will need a new cartridge or you will need to get the existing one retipped. The cartridge is no different internally than any of the normal B&O cartridges. What differs is the stylus which can track at frequencies up to 45kHz. To do this, you need either a Shibata or contact line stylus. The SMMC20CL will work from Soundmith or you can retip any MMC20 cartridge through Axel. He will fit a Shibata stylus to any MMC20 cartridge or MMCX000 cartridge. I had a MMC20S retipped as I wanted a black version. Sounds more like the original cartridges than the Soundsmith versions, which have a more modern forward sound to them.However before you go down this route, how many quad records do you have? There are two basic sorts - CD4 or discrete quad and the SQ or matrix type. You can play either on this system but you only need the flash cartridge for the CD4 type. Any record player and stylus can play SQ records - the decoder is built into the Beomaster 6000. Both systems have problems though! The SQ quad is just not very good to my ears - stereo is better! The CD4 is good but only with good pressings which have not been played on some other record player! Not many of those around! If played with a normal stereo cartridge tracking at a normal non B&O weight, the CD4 records are usually wrecked!

So my advice is use it either as a stereo system or, and I guess this is how it has been used, as an ambio system with the S22s adding presence rather than a discrete rear channel. The only problem in the end is that other B&O systems sound better in this mode! The 4400 would have the 6000 for breakfast! As would the 70s 2000 and as a quad receiver, the 3400 was better as well. It does look very cool though - which is why I still have mine - I don't use it though!

By the way, if you join as a silver or gold member, the Beomaster 6000 service and technical manuals are on site along with the user manual.

Blimey! Cheers for all the information, that's fantastic...

Ben, replacing dust caps on the woofers sounds like a great option, I had no idea that was possible. I assume the bits weren't too expensive? Can I contact Dillen through this site? They looked a bit dubious when I first inspected the speakers, and were slightly sticky to the touch, with one having a small tear as described. Two minutes after hooking them up to my Technics amp and playing a bit of Meddle to check they were working and I had bits of rubber flying off all over the place. Repair on those would be a great option.

Peter, that's a wealth of information you've given me there. As I said, I'm new to B&O, although not particularly new to keeping old hifi kit up and running. My current system is all late 70s Technics separates - which I was more than happy with, but obviously I was aware of B&O - just considered it to be out of my price range!  That was until I found this lot in a second hand shop at a price I couldn't refuse. I have had the casing off, to check and replace the indicator bulbs and found it exactly as you describe - with servo motors and tapes. Absolutely magic. Great to see it all working and moving around inside too! My god it's a full box though isn't it! Plenty of stuff crammed into not very much space!

Incidentally, the bulbs that have gone are all the ones for the motorised sliders (vol, pan, fade, bass, treble). They have actually blown, some are blackened and some just clearly have no filament left. It just seems odd that all these ones (which are all collected together in one board) have all blown, and the others, which illuminate the FM tuner etc. are all still working. To me that either indicates some underlying problem with that area of the circuit, or that someone has not been able to replace the bulbs in the past and has swapped them around to keep the more critical FM scale illuminated. Any ideas? The unit has definitely been accessed in the past. Some screws have been lost and replaced with a differently headed variety. Anyway, as I say I have some replacement 12v 30mA 5mm capless bulbs on order. I suppose I'll find out by replacing them and seeing if they blow out again. I have 10 coming and I need 5, so I can afford to experiment!

In answer to your question, I have no quad records and intend to run the system as a stereo set up. There is a button marked "AMBI ST" on the bank of switches in the middle of the heatsink at the back of the amp, which I assume switches it between quadraphonic and ambiphonic stereo. I assume in this case, the front speakers carry the main stereo signal and the rear the ambiphonic signal?

I do have the 'brick' remote! How fantastic is that? It's about the size of a paperback book, and with weight to match (no doubt from the 4mm aluminium sheet its faced with... It seems to be missing its battery compartment cover, but I have managed to find a battery (15V!!) for it on the internet today, which should be arriving along with my bulbs and a set of 2-pin DIN speaker plugs. Some cretin has hacked all the speaker wires off, unfortunately, so they need replacement.

Looking forward to getting it all up and running anyway...

Does it work? Try with some headphones - there are two sockets as they did produce quad headphones (not B&O!)

The Beogram 3400 is a nice deck too but is usually just a stereo one. If you look at the top plate, just blow where the cartridge would be when parked is either a blackk plastic dot or a red LED. If the latter, it too has the optional CD4 decoder fitted. These are actually quite rare. If it has that, the deck is worth a bit more.

If it were me, I would get your cartridge retipped with the Shibata stylus and use it as a stereo deck. I would however get at least one quad record just to see what it was like - I have a few around - if you are in the UK you can have one. They are mostly rubbish and quad is a daft idea as you don't normally listen to music which surrounds you!

I took some headphones into the shop and had a quick try... one channel did seem noticably quieter than the other, although I only had a short time to check it , and the lights that illuminate the balance control readout had gone, so it could have been trimmed a way over to one side. Or there could have been a poor connection in the headphone socket.

Plus I didn't have a record with me, so could only check the FM channel - but as I had no aeriel plugged in and I couldn't actually recieve anything. Not the best test conditions, eh!

Having got the lot home, I've stuck an LP on the BG6000 and the tonearm, speed contols etc all seem function correctly. I've not actually checked I get a signal out of it yet though, and I've yet to try the amp again.

The deal is that the shop had a price on the whole lot of £150 (!). The guys who run it know me, and so offered it to me for £100 (!!!). Plus they said if I can't get it working, they'll take it back. I thought for that, i couln't refuse... which it why I've not been so urgent to check it all over yet - I'm not out of pocket.

I'll have a look at the 3400 when I get home from work. Can't remember whether it has a dot or an LED. Cheers for the cartridge advice - I really know nothing in that area.

Thanks also for the offer of the quad record! I am indeed in the UK (hence the £). I assume quad recording was the realm of 70s Prog?!

Cheers,

Owen.

Put a screw driver in the FM aerial socket and you should get a signal. If the BG6000 is working as it sounds as if it is, you have a real bargain. That alone is probably worth £300 because of the RIAA being built in and the design.

I'll have a look at the recordings I have - I think prog rock could be a bit optimistic!

Ho ho! I have a few, but mainly classical which I would prefer to keep. I will however send you two - one SQ and one CD4 so you can compare. The SQ one is Chicago VIII and I am afraid the CD4 one is Perry Como - Just Out Of Reach. (I did not buy these - they came with my 6000 system!) They both look in nice condition - the Perry Como still has the plastic over the sleeve! PM me your address. I don't want them back! I would suggest you get the BM6000 working first though - I can probably lend you a cartridge to try if you don't have one though I would want that back!

Aaahhh... So the RIAA is effectively the phono preamp then? (I just followed the link in your first post - should have looked at that before!)

So am I right in thinking that the output signal from the BG6000 will already be line-level, and will go into any aux channel on any amp without requiring a specific phono channel or preamp box?

If that's the case i could do with working out a pinout from its DIN connector (5 pin) so I can make up an adapter to stick it into another amp, should the BM not work properly...

Ta,

Owen

Owen

Keep the Beomaster 6000 at all costs! Truly it is an amazing looking amplifier, and given what Peter has said about its reliability, will only become more sought after as increasing numbers get trashed when they stop working. I waited for two years looking for a good unit, before giving up and buying a duff one, then spending some serious money getting it fixed up and working like new. I don't agree that it is a poor relation in terms of B&O amps, as I own several well regarded amps (8000 and 2000), and have recently parted company with some of B&O's better others (5000 and 6000 80s version). I guess mine could sound so good because it was recently overhauled, so should be as good as new. Certainly nothing looks-wise can compare!

Welcome to the 6000 Quad club :)

BG6000 output - FR = Front Right - RR = Rear Right etc. Pin 2 is ground. My findings on the 6000 are in conjunction with Tim Jarman who serviced the 6000 first. We both felt that the 6000 is not as good as the later directly coupled amplifiers. Had a number to compare. Don't get me wrong, I like the 6000 - I have a rather good one myself, but I don't use it out of choice.

Mine went to Tim too, and was apparently the last one he ever wanted to see!

My ears say something different to me, but each to their own I suppose. I'd like to lead the way in banging the drum for this wonderful piece if for no other reason than soon there'll be none left as: a) no one knows how to fix them; and b) for some reason they are not as sought after as either the Beomaster/Beolab 5000 or the Beomaster 8000, so without a loyal fanbase who will maintain interest in this wonderfully idiosyncratic product??

I use mine most days because I love it :)

Brilliant, thanks - so I take it if the 4 channel amp doesn't work and I wanted to wire the BG into a stereo amp I'd need to solder up an adapter using pins it pins 2,4 and 5 - just taking the front channels?

Thanks for the offer of the records too, that's fantastic - though I'm dubious as to whether Perry Como can be improved by hearing him in quad... (wasn't he the origin of the word "comatose"?) And the cartridge too, wow! Very generous offer! I'll have to have a look what it's got fitted and let you know If and when I get the thing up and running. Meanwhile I will send you my address!

And John, thanks for the welcome! Certainly seems like I've joined an accommodating club, with people willing to share so much information to help me get set up. And it's good to find devotees to this amp - I don't want to be flogging a dead horse. Although worrying if the renowned repairman doesn't want to see them anymore...

Owen, mine were cracked and sticky as well. Its nothing to worry about as they are only dust caps and has nothing to do with the speakers actually. One point to note is that you should not use the speakers until you have replaced the dust caps as when the dust caps start to break apart, small pieces can fall into the speaker it self (sorry I don't know the exact technical terminology) which can lead to problems. It is not an expensive repair. Dillen is your best bet! He is a pro with everything B&O. If you need any instructions, let me know!

Owen

Some time has passed now, so the scars may have healed from Tim's point of view. You should try and contact him. If he doesn't want to take a look, then there are other people we could point you in the direction of, though from what I gathered when I had my 6000 fixed, no one is particularly eager to take a look at one of these units. The prize is worth it though:

Apologies for re-hashing this shot, but this is my 6000 Quad with my Beogram 4002. CDX2 is hidden in the sideboard. Speakers (out of shot) are the very impressive MC120.2s :)

Hmm. Okay, knowing that I might now carefully attack the speaker with the hoover and try and get all the little bits that might have dropped inside.

[Edited this post to remove huge images - i've stuck some smaller ones in below....]

Can anyone put me in touch with Tim? It'd be great to see what it's possible to, or is worth, sorting out...

Thanks chaps...

I have recapped/repaired 4 of these beasts and they are indeed very fiddly.  If it is cosmetically good then it is worth doing but you will need to find someone local as I would not like to put one through the postal system...

Hmm. I tried to post some images on here last night and it seems to have held my post for moderation... still hasn't appeared.

I gave the BM a bit of testing last night, but unfortunately was a little tight for time so I've not managed to do a great deal. I was just using the headphone sockets to test, as my speaker wire hadn't yet arrived. It's here now, together with DIN connectors, new bulbs and the battery for the brick... so there'll be a more comprehensive test tonight.

On a more negative note, through the headphone sockets at least, one of the front channels doesn't appear to be working. If i switch it into stereo I get good sound through both rear channels however. I suppose I could keep it as-is and use it as a stereo set up using just the rear channels. Seems a shame though. I don't suppose anyone could give an indication as to what might have gone, or what I could test to try and narrow down what might be wrong with it.

Good news is the BG6000 is functioning perfectly, aside from the muddy sound of shagged vinyl and/or stylus...

Lets try these pictures again (resized so you can see them properly)...

BM6000 (Note lack of illumination on the sliding scales. I've now replaced these bulbs and all is working fine):

The Brick remote. (Mine calls itself a "control module, rather than the grander "commander"):

BG6000:

Cartridge:

The 3400 turntable. (No LED - but it does say it's 4 channel...?):

BV5700 speakers (this one with missing dustcap):

BVS22 speakers: